It sounds like you’re skeptical about EA field building because most Chinese people find “changing the world” childishly naive and impractical. Do you think object-level x-risk field building is equally doomed?
For example, if 看理想 (an offshoot of publishing house 理想国 that produces audio programs about culture and society) came out with an audio program about x-risks (say, 1-2 episodes about each of nuclear war, climate change, AI safety, biosecurity), I think the audience would be fairly receptive to it. 梁文道, one of the leaders of 看理想, has shared on his podcast 八分 (at the end of episode 114) that a big part of his worldview is “先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐” (“worry before the people fear something will happen, and be happy only after the people are happy”), a well-known quote describing ideals of Confucian governance, and which has similarities with EA ideals.
In general, I guess I would have expected Chinese people to be pretty receptive to altruism given the emphasis on contributing (贡献) to the greater good in the party line (e.g. studying the good example of Lei Feng), which gets reflected a lot in media/textbooks/etc. But maybe I spend too much time consuming Chinese media and not enough time talking to actual Chinese people.
We know we can change the world—it’s not even a question when your grandparents are literal peasant farmers, your parents are industrial workers, and you’re a scientist. It’s just that altruism itself is cringe. Volunteering is cringe. I don’t know how to explain this to Westerners in a way they can understand.
For Westerners, I think the explanation can go like this. Say you want to do an open source thing, and spend hours on it. Okay.
But if you are in China, you could have used those hours to make money for your family.
Why would you take care of not-family unless you had too much money and time?
I do think the Chinese care about “humanity” in my experience, but Three Body Problem shows a typical version of it: survival of the mass via individual cruelties.
Like I said, though, I think the upside is that the Chinese are naturally unreceptive to anything like rights for AI.
I would still like to try and understand, if that’s okay. :)
Would you say the following captures some of it?
When you’re a kid, altruism/volunteering is what adults / teachers / the government keep telling you “nice kids” do, so it’s perceived as something uncool that you need to grow out of, and is only done by people who don’t think for themselves and don’t realize how the world really works.
That’s pretty close to it. And your parents and teachers regularly take you aside and remind you that it’s all LARP. I also suspect that the desire to engage in charitable behavior and political organization is motivated by cultural neuroses. Why should you go vote or politically organize or give your time away for free when you can so obviously improve your life by putting effort into your career? Christian/liberal guilt, I assume.
It sounds like you’re skeptical about EA field building because most Chinese people find “changing the world” childishly naive and impractical. Do you think object-level x-risk field building is equally doomed?
For example, if 看理想 (an offshoot of publishing house 理想国 that produces audio programs about culture and society) came out with an audio program about x-risks (say, 1-2 episodes about each of nuclear war, climate change, AI safety, biosecurity), I think the audience would be fairly receptive to it. 梁文道, one of the leaders of 看理想, has shared on his podcast 八分 (at the end of episode 114) that a big part of his worldview is “先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐” (“worry before the people fear something will happen, and be happy only after the people are happy”), a well-known quote describing ideals of Confucian governance, and which has similarities with EA ideals.
In general, I guess I would have expected Chinese people to be pretty receptive to altruism given the emphasis on contributing (贡献) to the greater good in the party line (e.g. studying the good example of Lei Feng), which gets reflected a lot in media/textbooks/etc. But maybe I spend too much time consuming Chinese media and not enough time talking to actual Chinese people.
We know we can change the world—it’s not even a question when your grandparents are literal peasant farmers, your parents are industrial workers, and you’re a scientist. It’s just that altruism itself is cringe. Volunteering is cringe. I don’t know how to explain this to Westerners in a way they can understand.
For Westerners, I think the explanation can go like this. Say you want to do an open source thing, and spend hours on it. Okay.
But if you are in China, you could have used those hours to make money for your family.
Why would you take care of not-family unless you had too much money and time?
I do think the Chinese care about “humanity” in my experience, but Three Body Problem shows a typical version of it: survival of the mass via individual cruelties.
Like I said, though, I think the upside is that the Chinese are naturally unreceptive to anything like rights for AI.
I would still like to try and understand, if that’s okay. :)
Would you say the following captures some of it?
That’s pretty close to it. And your parents and teachers regularly take you aside and remind you that it’s all LARP. I also suspect that the desire to engage in charitable behavior and political organization is motivated by cultural neuroses. Why should you go vote or politically organize or give your time away for free when you can so obviously improve your life by putting effort into your career? Christian/liberal guilt, I assume.